Spidey vs. The Hulk.....Adventures with Marvel Superheroes

There is no real battle here. In fact, there is room for everyone. But I do have a hurdle, the DC & Marvel universes are so huge and all the characters seem to run into each other. Not terrible, except when you are new to the world and everything you read references something else. In fact, it gets infuriating.

So I tried out She-Hulk (it was recommended by E.) The first trade paperback was okay, even though they played little games and intentially didn't tell her origin story. But, by the time I got to the second trade paperback major plot points effecting the She-Hulk story line where happening in other comic books. I am not even sure what other comic books. (Would that be the Avengers?) Very major things they need to tell us in the She-Hulk books, but only slipped in with passing comments. I think might have accidentally she killed her best friend, or some such thing and I think she got much stronger, but that all happened somewhere else. Somewhere else that I was supposed to have read so that I could understand the character's motivation in the book I was reading. That is a pretty quick way to get me to stop reading a story. I don't mind cameos from other characters or the lack of origin stories, but I don't like gapping holes in my storylines because I am supposed to be reading something else. So She-Hulk, with her struggles of how to have stregth and self confidence without being big and green, will have to go on without me.

Tonight I read Hulk Grey. An origin story, told in flashback. It was interesting. Iron-Man made an apperance, but I didn't need to know anything about him to understand the story. The book had a nice feel to it. I am not sure if I would run out and buy more, but it was a nice read. (Another lead from E.)

Then there is the Ultimate Spider-Man series that I have been borrowing from the library. I stumbled onto it. I was looking up Brian Michael Bendis for something else (probably something from the Nerve.com list). I saw the library had volume 1 of both Ultimate Fantastic Four & Ultimate Spider-Man, so I thought I would check them out. I guess this "ulitmate" series are a restart of sorts on the classic series. These two are decidedly modern day. Like Hulk Grey, I enjoyed the read, but they didn't blow my socks off. Well, the library has lots more Spidey, so I've continuted to read. I finished vol. 5 tonight. I am somehat fascinated by the illustrations with the extra big heads and eyes, but I am not sure if I would say that I like them. But, I have gotten sucked in. My excuse has been that I wanted to read up to the part where they introduce all the bad guys we meet in the movie that just opened. But that seems like a silly justification, I should just own up to wanting to read more. Plus, so far, the references to other characters have been limited and I follow all of the story with out reading something else.

(Side note: I have made friends with wikipedia. Seems like the legions of fanboys (& girls) have been good about filling the entries on various comic book characters with lots of good infomation. So when Avenger types showed up in Ultimate Super-Man and The Runaways I was able to get the cliffnotes backgrounds. This set-up only works well if the comics are written in such a way that I don't NEED to know lots of character history. But I am a curious girl, I like to be in on the joke.)

(Other side note: The San Francisco library only has vol. 1 of the Ultimate Fantastic Four, so that is where I stopped. It also looks like Brian Michael Bendis only wrote for issues included in the first tpb. Not that I will only read Benis, just an observation.)